The speaker owns a small patch of land, "my own acre," but it sits among what he calls "the whorehouses of the Lord." That phrase is bitter and a little shocking. It suggests a world of religion or spiritual display that he sees as corrupt, or at least for sale. He circles his plot, walking his mastiff past the "virtuosos," clever, polished people with "discreet tricks" who stay witty until midnight. He finds "no time to speak" to anyone.
What comes through is isolation, and shame at it. The speaker feels outside the sparkle of the others, and he admits he is "ashamed to sit alone." The final image is the sharpest: a candle too weak to light "my own ache." Even his own pain stays dim and hard to understand. The mood is sour, lonely, and quietly self-critical. The poem seems torn between contempt for the show-offs and a wish to belong, and it leaves him stuck between the two.